Pony Roleplay Wiki:Manual of Style
Document justification Purpose of this document The Manual of Style (MoS) exists to provide a uniform and clear writing approach to all articles on , so that writers can learn to be concise and effective while readers have little to no trouble understanding article content. Modification of this document The MOS exists to aid all users in the browsing and editing of Pony Roleplay Wiki, and therefore must only be modified such that it provides a reasonable benefit to the clarity of Pony Roleplay Wiki and to the ease of editing thereof. Modification of the MoS may be performed only by an administrator of Pony Roleplay Wiki, or by Wikia staff under all circumstances dictated by the Wikia Terms of Service. Editors wishing to suggest changes to the MoS may do so on the following page: * Project talk:Manual of Style Clarification of terms This section details the use of terms within the MoS and holds no bearing outside of this page. ; :A particular way of writing relatively unique to a given source or author, and composed of the writing's mood, clarity, objective or subjective traits, etc. Basic practice #'Always Preview before publishing.' #Do not roleplay-edit, i.e. do not edit "the way your character would edit". Always maintain an out-of-character third person voice when editing. #Always check the documentation of all templates used to see if categories are added by those templates, before adding any further categories manually. #Always check the spelling of values in fields passed to templates, as they are often used in technical matters and will cause problems with categorization or possibly render the page illegible if misspelled. #Be careful with wiki syntax characters or HTML such as |} or as they can render the page illegible if misplaced. Article titles Wording of titles The name of an article should consider the following points: * If the article is about a very specific subject such as a character, it should simply be that subject's name, e.g. Sweetie Belle, Equestria. * Articles are categorized in alphabetical order, and therefore closely related articles' titles should start with the same words so that they are listed closer together. Capitalization Article titles should be capitalized as though they were ordinary English phrases. As with English, all proper nouns such as character or place names, ethnicities, or nationalities should be capitalized: Lowercase first letter Mediawiki (e.g. Wikia) automatically renders the first character of an article's title in uppercase. Therefore, titles such as cannot be rendered properly. To fix this, the parser function can be used within the article's body (not within its title.) As long as the final title's letters are all the same this parser function will change the page title's display accordingly. Other article title trickery will also allow the use of italics. Titles can quickly be italicized with the template... assuming it is working correctly. Primary templates Some articles make use of special s designed to only appear once per article and which will automatically categorize that article based on the fields given. Those templates are: * All templates such as Such primary templates appear only once in any given article, and are ideally the first thing in said article. Opening Opening basics The opening of the article - placed after the primary template and including the name drop as its first paragraph - should be a very short and skimmed summary of the subject covering the most basic details and no more than three to five paragraphs long. This is akin to one's answer when dropping the name of the subject in conversation if asked to define who or what one was talking about and wishing to explain adequately within a few sentences. Name drop The first thing in the article's content past the primary template should be the article's title in boldface, excepting grammatical articles that must go before. The rest of this first paragraph should explain the very bare basics in as few words as possible. For the Apple Bloom page, something like this: Apple Bloom is a young female earth pony residing on Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville. She is the younger sister of Applejack and Big Macintosh, and granddaughter to Granny Smith. For the pegasus page, something like this: The pegasus is one of the four known pony races. It is identified by large bird-like wings sprouting from the back and the absence of a horn. Sections After the opening is concluded, the author is encouraged to use sections dedicated to more specific subjects of the article's subject. Portions of an article are separated by headers - larger text often with underlines - and each section delves into a more specific detail of the article's subject. Thus, each section touches upon a different, specific topic. If an article contains at least four sections, a table of contents will appear automatically. It can be moved to the right with the template. Section titles Titles of sections should follow these criteria: # All of the rules of article titles also apply to section titles, especially capitalization. # All heading titles in a given article should be different from all other heading titles within the same article. # Unless necessary to follow rule 2, headings should not refer to the subject of the article directly, e.g. for the section of Dusk Gleam's history, or is redundant and the title should be simply instead. # Headings should avoid links. # Headings should avoid images. # Headings should avoid questions. Language Universality Where possible, authors should avoid words particular to a dialect, most deviously words particular to either American or U.K. English such as eyeglasses (U.S.) and spectacles (U.K.), which may be replaced with simply glasses. Some conflicts such as armor (U.S.) and armour (U.K.) do not provide this luxury, and in this case there is no fair method of determining which to use. Proper names Proper names must maintain their regional spelling, e.g. United States Department of Defense compared to Australian Defence Force. Consistency In the event a particular dialect must win out within an article, that dialect should be maintained all throughout the article. Capitalization Internet shouting It is advised never to use capital letters for emphasis. This can be accomplished with italics, written like so: "The" The word "the" is only capitalized if it is part of an existing title that capitalized it. Compare with - "the" is not part of the Elements' title and thus is not capitalized. Existing titles Titles of existing works, when given in the same language, should retain whatever capitalization they were published with. When translated from another language, title capitalization should follow "title case", which varies by publisher but is usually: * The first word is capitalized regardless of what it is. * Every other word that is not an article (e.g. "the", "a", "an"), a preposition (e.g. "of", "in"), or a conjunction (e.g. "or", "and") is capitalized.